Let’s go over what we already know about the mystery neighbors in the other half of my duplex:

they’re technically supposed to be “working” on the house for our landlord.

they could maybe be squatting, though??

they’re probably illiterate.

definitely smoke too much because I CAN SMELL IT IN MY BEDROOM?!

the main players are a man and woman in their 40s/50s.

the woman’s name is allegedly “Melissa,” as we learned last week when Man left the house, made it halfway down the street, and then turned around and started screaming, “MELISSA!” At which point she came to the window and yelled “WHATTTTT????” in her patented Yinzer trash throat scrape.

Where we last left off, Henry reported that the cops had made a visit next door one night last week, around 2am. He said they were fighting so bad that he was getting ready to call the police himself, but someone beat him to it. We’re speculating that it was her.

After this happened, I went to work and was ranting about how trashy and psychotic these people are, and how the cops were there, etc etc. And then I had a vision of the cops over there, breaking up a domestic dispute while Henry and I are next door, churning out serial killer greeting cards under the warm glow of our Christmas mannequin. And then I started cracking up because psycho pot calling the psycho kettle black.

WE’RE NOT TRASHY THOUGH.

Well…not as much as them.

Hot Naybor Chris confirmed that the guy truly does work for a contracting company, because he was one of the guys doing work on HNC’s house a while back. Apparently, HNC was there the day that the landlord brought this guy over to do work, because HNC got to go inside the house and said that our old neighbors really did a lot of damage. Which is crazy because we RARELY HEARD THEM.

The last day I heard them do any work over there whatsoever was when I was home on Veteran’s Day. I heard drilling, hammering, your basic construction noises. Now that I’ve gotten more acquainted with these idiots, I find it hard to believe that they’re capable of hammering a nail into the wall to hang a picture of an egg in a frying pan, let alone operate actual power tools. #concern

Why haven’t we called the landlord, one might ask. Landlord has been out-of-town, apparently, possibly even out-of-country. (His wife is from Japan or something, I don’t care enough about him to keep up.) Also, anytime the landlord has any work done to his properties, he is constantly over there, pacing back and forth in his cowboy hat. This guy is no-nonsense—Henry has a video of him wrestling a shovel off a guy from the gas company who dug up our front yard and then was going to leave without solving our issue. I’m not a big fan of our landlord, but I for sure was that day.

Anyway, ever since the domestic incident, I clench up every time I hear the door slam and then the STOMP STOMP STOMPing of his boots on the steps. Actually, let’s just call him Boots from herein. I know we’ve established her name is Melissa but let’s call her…Phyllis. Because that throaty smoker’s voice, man.

I hear Boots clomping his way through the house and my brain starts screaming to me, “HIDE UNDER THE BED, DRUNK DAD’S HOME AND HIS BREATH STINKS OF JACK AND PUKE!” Something like that.

Late Wednesday night, I heard the door slam and the house shake, and then I heard the stomping of boots up the steps. A short scuffle then BAM – the door slammed again. I looked out the bedroom window and announced in a hoarse whisper to Henry, “He’s leaving again!” I watched him walk down t he street, then stop and get into the backseat of a car that rolled to a stop right in the middle of our street.

The car continued to sit there and I was getting mad. YOU CAN’T STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR ROAD, IT’S A BUSY STREET! But then BAM — the door slammed again and out scurried Phyllis. She got in the passenger seat and the car sped away.

“Maybe it was their Uber,” Henry mumbled, already falling back asleep.

But then! The boots again! His muffled voice slammed up against our bedroom wall, and PHYLLIS started Yinzering back! THEN WHO WERE THE MAN AND WOMAN WHO LEFT THE HOUSE OMFG THERE ARE FOUR OF THEM!?

Phyllis started screaming, “GO AWAY! GO TO YOUR OWN ROOM! LEAVE ME ALONE!” I was prepared to call 911 because I don’t fuck with this shit, but then it got very quiet. And then nothing for the rest of the night. Either they passed out or died.

****

On Thursday, while I was at work, Chooch was in the house alone. Henry was across the street in the parking lot probably having an affair, like he does, when he said he noticed that a guy was walking past our house and stopped. The man looked up at our neighbor’s open bedroom window, at which point Boot poked his head out, so the man kept walking. WELL APPARENTLY HE WAS STOPPING BECAUSE UNEARTHLY SEX MOANS WERE EMANATING FROM THE WINDOW, as Chooch proved by RECORDING THE SOUNDS WITH HIS PHONE.

“Um, it sounds like maybe she was hurt or something,” Henry said when they were telling me about it after I came home from work.

I listened to it later and congratulates on recording the audio of your first sex tape, son.

Totally doing it.

OMG I FEEL SO VIOLATED. I WANT TO VOMIT JUST TYPING THIS. NOW MY CHILDHOOD IS RUINED TOO.

The worst part though is that Chooch said it started with her saying “Help, help.”

Was this not consensual? Is he her captor?! Is the prequel to The Room playing out on the other side of my bedroom wall?

****

Friday was blissfully neighbor-free. Maybe they were dead? We kind of didn’t care.

But then Saturday morning rolled around. Henry was leaving to “go to the store” (i.e. cheat on me behind a pile of empty milk crates in the back of Giant Eagle) and he texted me excitedly because he saw Phyllis on his way out and she nervously said “Morning” to him. GREAT NOW HE’S GOING TO CHEAT ON ME WITH HER, TOO. Anyway, he said she looked young, like in her 20s and I said for sure that couldn’t be Phyllis then because I saw Phyllis once a few weeks ago when she and Boots were scurrying down the sidewalk with their gas station coffee. So now it was really starting to sound like Phyllis’s daughter is squatting there as well, and that’s who I saw leaving the house late Thursday night.

After Henry sent that text, I heard the basement door slam and Boots’ signature stomp began to shake the house.

“Don’t you think it’s weird how Boots always comes in through the basement?” I later said to Henry.

“Yeah, because he doesn’t have a key. The keys are in our house!” And then Henry reminded me that Chooch found keys in the front yard a few weeks ago, and how shortly after that, we heard what sounded like the basement door being kicked in. Because it sounds like Phyllis and Daughter keep Boots locked out, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.

Meanwhile, I was sitting at the desk in my bedroom, painting. My desk butts up against our shared wall, so I had a prime seat for when the Real Phyllis woke up and started screaming because “YOU CAME IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT AND TOOK MY BLANKET OFF MY BED!”

So now we know there’s at least a bed over there! And we think it was left there by the family who lived there before them because this merry band of misfits never actually moved anything in. So ew, gross.

Boots was all, “MWWAAAAHMWWAAAAHHHH” because I can never understand anything when it’s his turn to talk, he sounds like a fucking throatless hobo with three pairs of balls in his mouth. The next thing I knew, he was out on the front porch screaming at her, but she must have been standing in the doorway, because I could only see him from my bedroom window, pelvis a’thrust, arms flapping limply at his side. They were fighting over money at this point. I was barely able to discern the words, “OH YEAH OK, YOU BOUGHT IT, MMMHMMM” and if I were Phyllis, I’d have punched that Coke bottle eyeball’d motherfucker in the face. Ugh. Of course I didn’t have my phone, and by the time I ran downstairs to get it, they had retreated back to home base—the bedroom—where a fight over CEREAL ensued:

My phone shouldn’t be able to pick that up through a WALL. I’ve had plenty of neighbors living over there through the years, and we rarely could hear voices, only occasional bass from TV/radios. It takes some heavy-duty shouting to be heard through those walls.

And then they went quiet for most of the day. Later in the evening, they were gathered in The Room again, but they seemed to be coexisting peacefully so the sound of my radio was enough to drone out their slurred, cigarette-ravaged voices. They could film This Is Your Brain on Drugs commercials over there.

Pretty sure we witnessed Daughter buying drugs in front of the house that night, though.

Sunday: FULL DAY OF QUIET. We decided they must have fired up the caravan and visited some other crack den for the day.

TO BE CONTINUED because I’m still stressed out from living Part 2 last night.

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